Will Personal Blogging Be The Same In 2023?

My intuition tells me that personal blogging is not going to change much in 2023.

Personal bloggers are known to do things somewhat differently than those who blog professionally (And, that will always be the case).

While the professional bloggers would be masterminding new ways to make money via their blogs, personal bloggers would be focusing their attention on having fun with their blogs.

I Predict That A Lot Of Personal Bloggers Are Not Going To Change Their Themes As Often

If you have paid close attention to the themes that WordPress had released lately (both free and premium), you would have noticed that there is nothing special about them; they are:

• Bland
• Ugly
• Unimaginative

It is as though the era of beautiful-looking themes is dead.

I cannot blame a personal blogger for sticking with the theme that they first launched their blog with.

As a matter of fact, there are personal bloggers who have chosen to stick with their themes until they are no longer supported by WordPress.

For quite some time, I have been unable to preview new themes; whenever I try to preview them, the screen remains blank (It has been that way for me on my laptop computer and smartphone).

My educated guess is that they want me to upgrade to a paid plan in order for me to preview those new WordPress themes (I truly hope that I am wrong about that).

On a positive note, all of the WordPress themes are accessible. However, it makes no sense changing to a new theme if I am unable to preview it.

Why?

Because previewing a theme will let you know exactly if it is suitable for your blog and that can be deduced by:

• The way the fonts look.
• The size that the image is displayed at.
• The places where the widgets are located.

In the past, all bloggers had the ability to change the font if they did not like the one that came with the theme.

Images did not appear oversized on one’s home page; therefore, there was really no need for a blogger to dabble with that.

And, placing the widgets anywhere you wanted was possible.

Today, one is unable to change the font or alter the size of the font on their WordPress theme (They have to upgrade their package in order for them to do those things).

And, I have a sneaky feeling, that they purposely made the images appear oversized on the home pages of those themes, so bloggers will have to upgrade their package in order for them to adjust them via the usage of CSS codes (Photos that are of a smaller size look huge and pixelated).

That, my friend, is probably a ploy for you to use larger images with those themes.

Guess what?

Larger images do take up more storage space than smaller ones. So, by using larger images, you will end up running out of storage space much faster (And, when you eventually run out of storage space, you will have to delete photos to make room for new ones or upgrade your WordPress plan).

This has me thinking that WordPress is pressuring its users on the free plan to upgrade to a paid one.

I would not doubt for one moment that those new themes were purposely sabotaged by WordPress’s engineering staff.

If I am unable to preview any of the new WordPress themes, I will stick with the theme that I am currently using.

Besides, going along with a new theme without having the ability to preview it, is akin to buying clothing at a store without trying it on to see how it fits on you.

We know what the item of clothing looks like, but we are not sure if it is going to fit our body’s form factor correctly.

I Predict That WordPress Is Going To Focus A Lot Of Their Attention On Mobile

Earlier on in this blog post, I referred to the WordPress themes as being, “Bland.”

Now, my friend, there is a logical reason for that (And, that reason probably went below the radars of most people).

All website administrators know that the simpler the theme is, the faster it loads. So, that could be one of the reasons why we are seeing so many minimalistic-looking themes on WordPress.

Dear friend, minimalistic-looking themes are most suited for those people who view blog posts via their tablet computers and smartphones.

But those minimalistic-looking themes usually do not go down well for those of us who blog via our laptop computers and our desktop computers, because we know that we deserve something that is more visually appealing.

As someone who utilizes both the web and the mobile versions of WordPress, I have noticed firsthand that the WordPress Mobile App and the Jetpack Website Builder App display our blogs in a standard minimalistic manner.

Where the web version of WordPress truly displays the way in which our blogs look, the WordPress Mobile App and the Jetpack Website Builder App do the opposite; for example:

• Our theme looks way simpler on mobile (A person viewing your blog via a mobile device does not get to see the true beauty of your blog [and they will never have an idea of the effort that you went through to make your WordPress theme look visually pleasing] and that is somewhat unfair to you and all of the other people who take pride in how their blog look).
• The formatting of our blog posts is drastically changed; if we centred our images and H2 headers, they will appear on the left side instead (And, that, in my opinion, is unfair to those bloggers who want their blog posts to appear professional-looking).
• A lot of features are still missing from the WordPress Mobile App and the Jetpack Website Builder App; for example, drop-caps; which is something that I have grown accustomed to using on the web version of the Block Editor on WordPress.

My educated guess is that the WordPress Mobile App and the Jetpack Website Builder App are for those bloggers who desire a much simpler way of creating, publishing and viewing blogs on WordPress.

Despite WordPress focusing a lot of their attention on the mobile aspect of WordPress, the web version of WordPress is not going to disappear from off of the face of the internet anytime soon.

I Predict That More Personal Bloggers Would Be Participating In WordPress’s Daily Prompts

The newer bloggers (those who are eager to find a topic to blog about) will begin taking advantage of WordPress’s daily prompts.

Recently, I published, WordPress And Its Prompts on Renard’s World; in that blog post of mine, I discussed WordPress’s new practice of adding their daily prompts in the Block Editor of those who use the web version of WordPress.

Yesterday, I noticed that WordPress went one step further by also adding their daily prompts in the dashboard area of those people who use the web version of WordPress (That makes it difficult for a WordPress account holder to miss).

Therefore, the home page of the Jetpack Website Builder App is not the only place where the WordPress daily prompts are blatantly visible.

Anyway, these daily prompts from WordPress will get a lot of personal bloggers in the habit of writing and publishing blog posts regularly in 2023.

I Predict That Some People Who View WordPress’s Paid Plans As Being Too Expensive Will Go Self-Hosted

Many people have complained about the paid plans on WordPress.com.

In an attempt to save money, a lot of people will go the self-hosted route by hosting their personal blogs over on:

• Bluehost
• SiteGround
• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• GreenGeeks
• InMotion

Truthfully, it all depends on what type of package that you choose and the quality of service and the amount of money that you will have to pay, will, of course, vary greatly on the hosting provider that you choose to go with.

The self-hosted route is not a walk in the park because it requires a much higher learning curve — one that is much higher than that of what bloggers need to know on WordPress.com (Those who blog over on WordPress.org are aware of this fact; so, you better know what the hell you are doing when you go the self-hosted route).

I Predict That There Will Be An Increase In The Number Of WordPress Bloggers For 2023

Economists have predicted a rise in the cost of living for 2023 (This will result in people being frugal with their spending).

Hard times will lead to a lot of people becoming frustrated with life; a portion of those people will create WordPress blogs — a medium that they can use as a form of escapism and also a place in which they could use to maintain their sanity.

So, expect to see an increase in the number of bloggers on WordPress in 2023.

I Predict That Some Personal Bloggers Are Going To Spend More Of Their Time Writing High-Quality Blog Posts

The God’s/Goddess’s truth is that high-quality blog posts do well in the area of getting noticed on Google and Bing.

Also, is a well-known fact that readers tend to gravitate toward high-quality blog posts.

By the way, high-quality blog posts are:

• Blog posts that are well-written.
• Blog posts that are filled with useful information.
• Blog posts that are evergreen.
• Blog posts that are devoid of spelling and grammatical errors.

Realistically, having high-quality content on your blog works well in everyone’s favour (It is something that both professional bloggers and personal bloggers can utilize to their advantage).

Final Thoughts

So, those are my predictions for personal blogging in 2023; some of them may come to fruition, while some of them may never happen.

By the way, if they all came true, that would make me look like the modern-day Nostradamus (And, I do not want to be viewed as someone who is well-endowed with psychic abilities).

Please feel free to share your perspective on what you have just read.

And, most of all, thank you for reading!

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